Is Calypso Dying
Arts On Sunday
Reggae is strong, but is calypso dying?
By Al Creighton
Sunday, March 2nd 2008 Stabroek News
The Caribbean Beat January/February 2008 issue carries, among many
other articles, two contrasting features on the Caribbean's great
cultural traditions, reggae and calypso. One feature invites readers
to remember a strident act from the recent past, proclaiming it a
vintage performance that remains strong and has never changed. The
other expresses fears that a great act from the very foundations of
the Caribbean musical tradition is facing extinction and might have
to change with the times to survive.
Caribbean Beat, published in Port-of-Spain by MEP, is edited by Judy
Raymond. But it still maintains its association with two of its most
celebrated names, Consulting Editors Jeremy Taylor and Nicholas
Laughlin, who previously edited the magazine and are also well known
in connection with the Caribbean Review of Books. The Beat maintains
its own close contact with Caribbean books in its offer of brief
reviews which are now different in style and a little longer than
they were when run by Taylor and Laughlin. But that tradition
continues with coverage of some significant titles including Four
Taxis Facing North, a debut collection of short stories on the
Trinidadian middle class by Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, daughter of
the great Derek Walcott, and Badjohns, Bhaaji & Banknote Blue: Essays
on the Social History of Language in Trinidad and Tobago, by linguist
Lise Winer.
For a region in which nothing was created, the Caribbean has not done
so badly at all. Two of its greatest cultural contributions to the
world, the reggae and the calypso, are featured in the Beat
January/February 2008. Two articles on reggae, one about bastion of
culture music Burning Spear and the other about two of the best-known
reggae instrumentalists, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, radiate
prevailing longevity; while the other, about the tradition of the
calypso tent, is draped in doubt about the future.
The feature 'Is Calypso Dying?' by Debbie Jacob casts a despairing
eye on the present state of the calypso tent in Trinidad and wonders
if they are going out of style, out of favour and out of their time.
She wonders whether the old-time, old-style art of calypso with
commentary on society and politics has lost its popularity, and is
now totally supplanted by the more up-beat, faster paced soca and
party music. She cites the comments and concerns of a few
calypsonians and tent managers, the falling numbers and reduction in
audiences, as well as the fact that some tents have closed and others
might follow.
The indications are that three things are happening, each leading to
the same result. One is that the older forms of the calypso are
capitulating to the soca, and the newer forms tend to be more popular
and market-driven so that the traditional kaiso is less in demand.
Secondly, the large crowds that used to flock the tents to hear those
types of commentary and humour no longer get what they have been
accustomed to, and have therefore deserted the tents. The third is
that today's audience has little taste for the traditional calypso
and goes elsewhere for entertainment.
Are we witnessing the passing of an ancient tradition? The leading
authority on the calypso, Gordon Rohlehr, identifies the first
calypso tent of the modern era as The Railroad Millionaires opened in
1921 by Chieftain Walter Douglas at 26 Duncan Street in east
Port-of-Spain. The styling and set-up of this new tent was said to be
a deliberate attempt to create a new brand and image for calypso and
the tent. This was because the calypsonian had developed a very bad
and degenerate reputation for rum-drinking and lawlessness. In
addition, the move was to divorce the tent from the equally
discredited stick-fighting Kalinda associations. That was also a sign
that the middle class - perhaps, more accurately - the
entrepreneurial middle class, had taken a keener interest in the
predominantly working-class calypso.
However, the tradition goes much further back to previous centuries.
A useful date is 1783, when a new colonial dispensation invited
French settlers into Trinidad, and the early forms of the Creole
calypso came with them from the French Caribbean islands. The
Trinidadian French Creoles dominated when the form developed in the
island and calypsos were sung mainly in Patois. Several forces of
history, especially the development of the 'Jamette carnival,'
brought the calypso and calypso tents into disrepute in the late
nineteenth century. Associated with it, as well, were the violence of
the stick-fighting tradition and the tainted disreputable reputation
of the lumpen proletariat of east Port-of-Spain.
In spite of all that, the calypso and the tent, developed as a
glorious creative and social tradition that for a long time suffered
from the prejudices and suppressive legislation of the ruling
classes. This history is documented by Rohlehr, among others, and
celebrated in theatre by Rawle Gibbons. In a work known as The
Calypso Trilogy, Gibbons dramatises the rise of the tents and the
calypsonians of the modern era, including the careers of Spoiler,
Lord Kitchener and the emergence of The Mighty Sparrow in the
contemporary calypso.
The tents flourished in previous decades, including the Calypso Revue
run by Kitchener, one organized by the official calypsonians
association, and the Original Young Brigade run by Sparrow, who also
carried on with a tent at his Sparrow's Hideaway in Diego Martin.
Those have all either closed or been replaced. Perhaps the heaviest
cloud of discouragement accumulated over the viability of the tents
when one of the largest and most popular of them, Spektakular, closed
in 2003 because of dwindling audiences.
Debbie Jacob quotes a number of practitioners and managers who all
point to that factor as the greatest sign of change or challenge to
the calypso and the tent. Some say they have passed their time and
can no longer be sustained by an aging audience. They say
contemporary tastes are different and the tents will have to satisfy
the current market or fold up. Other opinions are not prepared to
give up, and argue that while prevailing factors such as escalating
crime have caused many to stay away from the tents in the capital
city, the audiences are just as enthusiastic as they have always been
in the out-of-town locations.
There is also a consensus that the calypso and the calypso tent are
established and entrenched parts of the Trinidad Carnival and are
guaranteed a place. The tradition will live on as long as carnival exists.
On an entirely different note is the feature on reggae, 'Do You
Remember?' by David Katz who pays tribute to one of the long-standing
establishments in roots reggae. It reviews the career of Burning
Spear, whose real name is Winston Rodney, born in poverty in St Ann,
Jamaica - Bob Marley country. Burning Spear is as strong and viable a
voice as ever with his very strident, distinctive rustic sound and
his unchanged adherence to 'culture' in a changing market for other
newer, more upbeat types. The Spear, who is known for Marcus Garvey,
Slavery Days and Christopher Columbus, who he calls "a damn blasted
liar" now lives mostly in Queens, New York, but maintains not only
his original home in St Ann, but his original voice and his main
themes of Rastafari, Black liberation and the heritage of slavery.
The other reggae feature celebrates Sly Dunbar and Robbie
Shakespeare, who have been playing drum and bass for the greatest of
reggae since the 1970s. They have toured and played with Bob Marley
and Peter Tosh, and have been associated with some of the leading
music recorded in the reggae tradition. Regardless of shifts and
changes, they march on.
